Читать книгу The Case of the Two Pearl Necklaces - A. Fielding - Страница 3

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ARTHUR WALSH hurried up the steps of Friars Halt, across the big hall and along a passage to his father's study. The footman looked after him in surprise. He had never seen Mr. Arthur in a hurry before. Then he saw him pause before a bowl of flowers as though enchanted by their beauty; and neither had he ever seen him do that before. Arthur stood so long staring at the delphinium spires that the footman had perforce to leave him entranced. But Arthur was not spellbound. Once he cast a glance at the study door that suggested an inexperienced lion tamer about to enter the cage of his fiercest animal, and by no means liking the prospect.

He was twenty-eight years old, fairly tall, and had a face that began well in a good forehead, but ended in a weak chin. Finally, after one more prolonged stare at the flowers, he opened the door beside him and went on in. Colonel Walsh sat looking into the fire, an open letter in his hand. He had a long thin face with a tightly compressed mouth and steadfast grey eyes. Taken together, eyes and mouth gave him a curiously daunting air. Not to Colonel Walsh did people turn to ask the way. Not of him would children inquire the time. He had never to suffer from the club bore. One glance from him, and straggler, child or bore passed on.

"Gerald is dead," Colonel Walsh said, turning to face his son. His voice was deep and powerful.

For a second Arthur looked as though he could not place his brother Gerald. "When did it happen?" he asked after a second. "Poor old Gerald Where was it?"

"In Smyrna. Circus performance. The roof crashed in, and Gerald was among the dead. His passport gave his name, and Raeburn—who's consul there—identified the body."

Colonel Walsh spoke abruptly. Looking into Arthur's face, it came to him with a sudden and quite unexpected wrench that Gerald, the brilliant though unreliable, was dead, and that Arthur, the dull one, alone remained to him. For he had but the two sons.

"It seems only yesterday that he walked through that door laughing and swinging his cap," Arthur said, drawing a deep breath.

A spasm crossed his father's face.

"He lied to me," he said evenly, but with a suggestion in his low tone of answering some accusation. "Lied He knew that is the one thing I won't stand, yet he did it. You owned up. He lied!" He drew a difficult breath as he added: "Gerald was given to lying."

Arthur nodded. Gerald was. As a rule he had done it well, but on the occasion in question his father had had inside knowledge, and so Gerald had been turned adrift with his clothes and a hundred pounds in money. That had been nearly three years ago. And now Gerald was dead...Arthur looked almost curiously at his father. The Colonel had clearly had a painful shock. One wouldn't have thought he would have cared!

"I came in to tell you something, Pater," Arthur said abruptly. "I'm afraid it's rather an inopportune moment..."

Colonel Walsh straightened up, looking inquiringly at him, his formidable, narrow face as hawk-like as usual. "Well?"

His son looked at him with something harder in his eye than one might have expected.

"I'm going to be married."

"And who is the lady?" Colonel Walsh leant forward sharply. One would say that he guessed the name, or believed that he did.

"You've never met her, I think. Her name is Violet Finch."

His father's face became blank. Colonel Walsh had felt certain that now that Ann Lovelace was back in England, and unmarried, Arthur would try his luck once again—and this time with success. He had assumed that this would be the announcement. But a Violet Finch...?

"And her people are?" inquired Colonel Walsh. "Nothing much," Arthur gave a little deprecatory smile. "Her father was a barrister. He's dead. Her mother—" He hesitated.

"She's not the Mrs. Finch surely?" the Colonel interposed.

"I really can't possibly say whom you mean by that," was the acid retort. "Violet's mother is lady who, left quite penniless, started some night-clubs which for a time succeeded very well. And therefore made her a lot of money—and enemies." Colonel Walsh was grimly silent. So it was the Mrs. Finch! His mouth was tighter lipped than usual. So tight that at a glance it looked as though he had only one lip.

"You'll like Violet, Pater. She's as straight as—as you are yourself. Outspoken—forthright—not at all a woman of the world; but she has a vitality that I envy!" Arthur hurried on.

"That's to the good," the Colonel commented. "Well, Arthur, I won't pretend that I would not have been pleased if it had been some one your aunt and I know, whose people we know; but any one you love will receive the welcome due to my son's wife. When is the wedding to be?"

"Next month. I don't want a long engagement, and Violet isn't very happy at home. She's not in the least a cabaret girl, sir. You don't need to be afraid of that."

"How did you come to meet her?" Colonel Walsh asked.

"At one of the Little Owls." Those were Mrs. Finch's famous night-clubs. "She looked such a country girl, such a fish out of water, that I wondered to see her there...I don't say I wasn't a bit taken aback when I found out who she was—I didn't catch her name when we were introduced but by that time I had talked to her and—well, you can't explain these things, can you?" he added with a deprecating laugh.

Colonel Walsh agreed that you couldn't, then went into the question of the increased income his son could expect at his marriage. Colonel Walsh was a very wealthy man indeed. Principally interested in tobacco, his range included many other things as well. At the present moment Arthur was in his father's head office and earned, or rather was paid, a salary of five thousand a year. In addition to this he had his allowance of one thousand. Quite a comfortable total, even in these days. He had been in the Army, and at that time his father had considered a thousand quite sufficient for his needs. Arthur had thought otherwise, and there had finally come a night when the Colonel faced him with a pile of bills before him and Arthur next morning had sent in his papers. It was after that that he had entered his father's office—and Gerald had gone abroad.

"I started some years ago," the Colonel went on, "a sort of marriage fund for each of you two boys. Then when Gerald failed me, and dropped out of the reckoning, the two funds were made into one. It stands at fifty thousand now, and you shall have my cheque for it as my wedding present."

"You're more than generous, Pater," Arthur said gratefully.

Colonel Walsh made a gesture. "I appreciate the way you've kept nothing back about your future wife. If only Gerald had realised that I'll overlook anything but deception, he would probably be here alive to-clay—not killed in an Asia Minor circus."

Arthur nodded. He said nothing. Gerald had been "Gerald." Handsome, debonair, careless of money, and of whether what he said tallied with facts or not. The end had been inevitable, as he had often warned Gerald that it must be.

When he was alone, the Colonel sat on his sad thoughts with Gerald rather than with Arthur.

His sister, Lady Monkhouse, found him still there, staring into the fire, his pipe practically out. She had not yet learnt Arthur's news. Arthur had always been her favourite, but she heard of his engagement with almost comic fury.

"Arthur! Arthur! to be caught by the daughter of that dreadful woman!" She was inconsolable. "Oh, I saw her once; great big, bouncing, noisy bold-eyed creature! If only Ann Lovelace had taken him, when he was head over ears in love with her."

"In those days there was Gerald," Colonel Walsh said in a level voice. "Arthur was the younger son—then."

Lady Monkhouse was shocked. Truths often had that effect on her.

"Ann would have been a wonderful wife for Arthur," she went on, "and he adored her..."

"At that time," finished the Colonel dryly. "Pity he couldn't have taken a fancy to Kitty." Lady Monkhouse raised her nicely plucked eyebrows. Kitty was the Colonel's niece, and lived with them.

"Kitty," Lady Monkhouse said now. "Well, hardly! I think, George, that Arthur is far too clever to be content with little Kitty I Now Ann would be his intellectual equal, and socially, of course—with her connections—she's the Duchess's favourite niece—anything would have been possible...But this Finch girl...! I can't believe it! I simply cannot!"

Arthur came in. "Talking about Violet?" he asked gaily.

His aunt looked sombrely back at him. "Don't expect me to congratulate you," she said bitterly. "It would be a mockery!"

Upon which there was a very fine family quarrel. Arthur, usually very cautious in his words, raved about his aunt's prejudices and Violet Finch's excellences, and his father took his part. So did Kitty when she came in, lured, it must be confessed, by curiosity at the loud tones of the talk. Kitty was a pale-faced slip of a girl with big, brown eyes and an air of youth and freshness and candour that far outweighed mere prettiness in Colonel Walsh's opinion. He would have considered Arthur a very lucky man indeed to have won Kitty. And he had thought that Kitty's heart was turning a little to Arthur. Now he hoped that he had been mistaken. He would not like to think her young life hurt beneath his roof...

Arthur finally stalked away in a fine temper, leaving his aunt looking rather ill-at-ease. She had spoken very hastily...she had said some things anent Violet Finch and the family of Finch that might well have been put differently; and some that were best not put at all.

"I had no idea you knew so much about nightclubs," her brother remarked dryly.

Colonel Walsh had the masculine idea that family plain speaking was his own prerogative, that as long as he did not swear at things no one else should do so. He never could understand why a king of Israel needed to get a prophet to curse the people for him...That always seemed to him one of the few things a man should do for himself, if done at all.

"Oh, I've been to the Little Owls. A couple of years back every one went. That Finch woman made a sinful amount of money out of it. Simply incredible profits Thousands there every night...They gambled for enormous stakes upstairs in her private flat, it was whispered. Now I hear that the place is running down as speedily as it shot up. And to think that Arthur—of all young men! I thought he, at least, was sensible!"

Walsh winced. She was referring obliquely to Gerald, and somehow—just now—it hurt.

"Look here, Kitty," Lady Monkhouse wound up. "You're going to town for a week—to get your brother's flat ready for his return. Do call on these Finches and give us your opinion of the girl. I may be prejudiced, though I'm sure I'm not..."

Kitty raised no objection to this informal scrutiny of the future Mrs. Arthur Walsh, agreeing to do so within the next few days.